Protecting your Zoom Virtual Events - “Green Rooms”

There are several things to keep in mind when hosting virtual events with Zoom. The first step is controlling who can access your meetings or webinars. Maintaining who can un-mute, share screen, chat, and more is essential, but keeping a tight rein on the actual attendees is the starting point for any secure event. For webinars, registration[link] can help with this. Still, for meetings when you need video participation and cameras with your audience, it is essential to remember that the meeting ID is easily shared, allowing someone who is not invited to join. 

• Never post your meeting IDs publicly or on social media. 
• Always ask your guests not to share. 
• Use meeting passwords to increase security.
• Use our waiting room feature [more Information] to give the last verification step before a new party joins your meeting.

For meetings that will broadcast as part of a more massive event, we suggest using “Green Rooms.” While waiting rooms are a feature of Zoom, green rooms are behavior in how we use Zoom, adding a layer of verification that everyone joining is indeed an expected guest and can be trusted with their interactivity in the meeting.

The green room is a separate Zoom meeting outside of your main event. In the green room meeting, a participant’s identity is confirmed, and the name, avatar, audio, and video that they will use for joining the main broadcast meeting will be checked. At that time, the participant will be given a moment to ask any questions that they might have about Zoom and/or the experience.

Greenroom Flow

1. Attendees are invited with one or more meeting IDs that belong to their assigned green room (the actual meeting ID used for the main event is not sent, so it cannot be shared)
2. Participants join the green room meeting (either by clicking a link or manual ID/password input) and joining its waiting room.
3. The green room host allows them into the green room meeting after confirming their name on the participant list.
4. The host requests to turn on audio and video (and troubleshoot if necessary)
5. After confirming all of those, the green room host sends a link to join the main meeting via in-meeting chat. 
6. The green room host and main meeting host keep in contact to track which users are coming through the green room process and only allow those into the main meeting. If the link is shared at this point and someone has not been through the green rooms, they will not be admitted from the main meeting's waiting room.

Greenroom Slide

To quickly bring your participants up to speed and reinforce the rules, we suggest sharing a slide similar to this one in your green rooms. This helps participants who need technical help and reminds them of the key rules of their joining. 

Greenroom rules:

• Participants are not able to unmute their microphones. If you’d like to speak, you will need to use chat to message the meeting host to unmute you privately.
• Please use appropriate images if you are using a virtual background.
• Please make sure your video image is appropriate.

Greenroom best practices:

• Participants are expected to be dressed appropriately.
• To be in a silent environment so that their voice is clear if they are unmuted.
• To be in a space with appropriate lighting for better video quality.
• To have a camera turned on if actively participating in an event.

Green Room Legal Disclaimer:

• Participants will be notified if the event is being recorded.
• If they are joining the event, their consent is implied.
• Their information and data might be used for marketing (or other) purposes. 
• Participants will be reported to the Law Enforcement agency for threats, racism, nudity, child pornography, or any other inappropriate behavior. 

Greenroom Slide Please copy and style accordingly 

Moderator guide for Green Rooms/Segments

Print Guide

As a moderator for green rooms, you will be responsible for checking people in, accepting them into the meeting from the waiting room, helping them troubleshoot video and audio issues (if there are any), and getting them ready until they join the main event. 

Checking in

• Guests will join the waiting room, and you will see the username they are joining with. Check if their name is on your guest list and if yes, accept them into the meeting. This name maybe something like “Kevin’s iPad,” so you will need to use your judgment.
• Once inside the meeting, ask them to turn on their video and unmute their microphone. 
• By seeing their video, you can confirm the identity of a person once again.
• This will ensure no unwanted guests are accessing the main event.

Troubleshooting

• If a person has camera issues, ask them to open the video settings by clicking on the up arrow next to the bottom left corner's camera icon.
• From there, you can run with them through all of their video settings, ensuring that they are properly setup.
• If a person has microphone issues, ask them to open audio settings by clicking the up arrow next to the bottom left corner's microphone icon.
• From there, you can run with them through all of their audio settings, ensuring that they are properly setup.
• If they do not have the microphone icon next to their name in the participant list, they cannot join into audio. You will need to use an in-meeting chat to tell them to click the join audio button at the bottom left of their screen and then select join with computer audio.

Forwarding the guest to the main event

• Once you have confirmed identity, ensured that Audio and Video settings are set properly, you will send a guest to the main event.
• To do that, you will need to provide them with either a join link that has an embedded password, or you will provide them with Meeting ID and password separately.
• Make sure to send those via private in-meeting chat, so other guests or participants can not use those before vetting them.

Print Guide